The Wyoming Black Hills

Elk Mountain Firetower | 4th of July Weekend in the Bearlodge Mountains, Wyoming | Hiking to Warren Peak | The Black Hlls National Forest | July 2025

After concluding our time exploring Jewell Cave National Monument, we pushed further West on US-16 towards the Wyoming Border. Based on maps, we saw that there was another firetower just on the South Dakota side of the border, and since two of the past three nights we had terrific luck stumbling upon boondocking locations near firetowers, I figured we should go for the hat trick.

We left US-16 and followed forest roads to the South. We were well within an area of the Black Hills neither of us had explored before and it isn’t nearly as developed as the Eastern region, but (and this would prove to be the case for most of our time in the forest) the forest roads were easy to drive, well maintained, and safe for the van.

We climbed slowly yet surely towards Elk Mountain firetower. After we left the private ranchlands, we kept our eyes peeled for any obvious pull offs. We had about 10 miles of uninterrupted forest road and surely would find one…surely. The forest part was locked in by trees, and then we were in open cattle grazing country along the ridge leading up to the firetower. But even here, there was nothing. The road side was slopey, or brushy, or really rocky. And then we were at the end of the road and the firetower where there could have been a place to overnight if it weren’t for the signs expressly forbidding it.

A bit annoyed and not really sure what to do next, we got out and enjoyed the views the van had worked so hard for. I climbed the firetower where I met the watcher and spent a good time talking with her. She was a local and had been manning firetowers for the past 15 years, including a fairly long stint at Bear Mountain Lookout. We exchanged stories, complained about OHV’s (the increase of OHV’s were what drove her away from Bear Mountain to her current station), and she gave advice on a couple boondocking sites we may have missed or could consider.

We really hadn’t intended to visit as many firetowers as we ended up doing on this trip, but it became a nice focus. Easier walks on established roads and trails, and almost always good views. It would almost be enjoyable to create a Firetower Challenge for the Black Hills if I didn’t think it would have a negative impact.

I said goodbye to the watcher and we made the long and slow drive back to the highway. The few boondocking spots along the road all ended up being full or muddy and so Jess started doing research as I drove into Newcastle, Wyoming for gas.

After tossing out a few options based on reports of bad roads, we decided that we would go up to the Bearlodge Mountains for the weekend. We were already planning on going here, and while it was close to I-90, it was also a considerable drive from any of the touristy locations that might be packed out for the holiday weekend. The Bearlodge Mountains (sometimes called Warren Peaks) are part of the Black Hills forest, but form a wholly separate massif completely in Wyoming. We had actually camped on the North end of this mountain back in 2017 during our first visit to the region and on our way to Hawaii.

The drive from Newcastle up to I-90 was quite scenic , but most of the land belongs to private ranches so there wasn’t any opportunity to stop. We followed a nice paved forest road up to near the top of the Bearlodge Range and soon found a nice level spot with lots of open sky for solar and settled in for the July 4th weekend…except the weather decided to celebrate the 4th early and there was quite the thunderstorm that crossed right overhead. Lots of thunder, lightning, and hail, but fortunately no damage.

The next day we knew we wanted to stay put in our location. We were fairly high in elevation and last night’s storm signaled the beginning of a cold front starting to come through, so the temperatures were almost cool. For that day’s activity we decided to walk the road from our boondocking spot to the highest point in the Bearlodge Mountains. You can drive all the way to the peak, so our walk was entirely on the road, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t excitement. We passed through a sizeable herd of cattle including a couple bulls that were doing their best to block vehicular traffic. Fortunately, the bovine were fairly skittish, and when they weren’t they were blessedly passive (Jess’ favorite fun fact to bring up in these situations is that cows kill more people than sharks every year).

The summit of Warren Peaks is occupied by yet another firetower and offers 360* views. This lookout was also manned and we chatted with this lookout for a while. He said that last night’s lightning show was quite exciting from his vantage, but we were all glad that no fires had cropped up yet. He also pointed out a B-2 bomber participating in an airshow out towards Rapid City for the 4th of July. It was small and probably 50+ miles away, but it was distinctly a B-2. Another interesting site was the remains of a radar station on a neighboring peak – except this was a nuclear powered Air Force radar station. It didn’t operate long though and was closed by 1968.

I logged a couple letterboxes, and then we returned the way we came. The summit of Warren Peaks is one of the few peaks in the Black Hills with enough prominence for my personal climbing challenge. The others in that list include Black Elk, Odakota, Terry, and Inyan Kara. That last one is surrounded by private land so I effectively only had one more peak that I really wanted to get.

We ended up spending the rest of our holiday relaxing at the van. There may have been some fireworks that night down in Sundance off of I-90, but the trees blocked the way and we weren’t in a celebratory mood to enjoy them.